Supply and Demand
by comealongpixie
Summary: "What the fuck is wrong with you?" A look at Missy Bender's life in the foster system. Trigger warning for rape, molestation and violence among other things.


Rating: M for just about everything.

A/N: Something I whipped up while waiting for my files to be recovered so I can continue Neurosis. I wrote it for a tumblr rp in which I play an eighteen year old Missy Bender as a hunter (her url is Missyonabender, if you're curious) but you don't need to be a part of that rp to understand this.

This is a very intense, dark piece, much darker than anything else I've written. It's meant to showcase her inherent psychopathy and how it was exacerbated by her time in the foster care system and at Juvenile Hall, with a few hints at her life with the Benders as well. It's non-linear and covers her life from the ages of ten to sixteen.

Trigger warnings include: Rape, attempted/implied molestation, animal abuse/murder, child abuse/murder, prostitution, child prostitution, pyromania, mild cannibalism, stockholm syndrome, general violence and mental illness. There is also swearing and semi-graphic consensual sex.

She overhears therapist number four tell social worker number three, "It's not question of if she's going to kill someone...it's a question of when." The social worker, who has been so nice to her face, doesn't argue or defend her.

"Good to know," she mumbles.

"It's okay if some parts of it felt good," says therapist number three. "Your body is designed to respond to things like that. That doesn't mean what he did to you wasn't still wrong."

"It didn't, though," Missy says. "It didn't feel like anything at all."

"That's okay too," says number three, but she seems uncomfortable.

Foster dad number two slams another girl against the wall. Her head cracks open, and he runs. The other kids hide in their rooms, and an older girl calls 911.

Missy kneels by the body. Straightens her out, lies her on her back. Closes her eyes and crosses her arms. Then she touches the pool of blood and raises her finger to her lips, tasting it.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" the other girl screams as she drags her away.

She sucks on pennies for weeks so she can remember the taste.

She sits in front of principal number four. His glasses are crooked and his mouth his sharp. "Why did you tell your teacher that the test she gave you asked-" he looks at his clipboard-"...stupid-ass questions?"

She stares at him. "Because it did ask stupid-ass questions."

She gets detention and writes swear words on her desk.

"Stupid little whore," says the Older Boy as he pumps into her over and over. It hurts, so bad, and her hips are not yet wide enough to take this kind of pounding, but she's too scared to scream, so she just lies there and keeps her eyes closed.

"This is all you're good for. You're just a walking set of holes. That's all you'll ever be."

"Your last therapist's notes say that you didn't feel anything when your foster brother raped you."

"That was a lie."

"Was it?"

"Yes."

"What did you feel?"

"Good."

"Good?"

"Yes."

"Good how?"

"Scared."

"And scared is good?"

"It was nice because I felt something at all."

Therapist number four scribbles on her clipboard and doesn't ask again.

"He's wrong," therapist three says. She thinks it happened in her last foster home because Missy doesn't want to have to move again. "You're more than that. That's just what he thinks. You don't have to let the rest of the world define you."

"So there are other people in the world who think that?" she asks.

"Sadly, yes." Three shifts uncomfortably.

The wheels begin to turn.

She catches a squirrel in the backyard of foster home number one and cuts it open, pokes at it's insides, but does so cautiously so when she's done, it is miraculously still alive. She goes inside to get a needle and thread, but an older girl tells her that it's probably better off dead at this point. So she goes out and snaps it's neck, and she likes it.

In school, her teacher explains supply and demand.

"You sell things people want," she says. "That's how people get rich."

"Why me?" Missy asks. Three smiles sadly.

"It had nothing to do with you. You didn't deserve what happened to you."

"Do you think he's done it to other girls?"

"I'm sure of it."

The pieces click, and she smiles for the first time. "Thank you," she says. "That makes me feel a lot better."

The next time, she watches him as he pulls on his jeans. "What?" he snaps.

"I'll tell."

"I'll beat the shit out of you."

"Then I'll tell them you did that too."

"They won't believe you." She can tell he's said this to a lot of girls.

"Yes, they will. You have a record."

His eyes narrow. "How did you know about that, you little bitch?"

She smiles. "Lucky guess."

"What's it gonna take to keep you quiet?" His facade is cracking. She has him cornered and she knows it. But now that the time has come, she's not really sure what she wants, so she just watches him to see what he offers up.

"What, you want money?" He pulls a five out of his wallet and tosses it at her. She picks it up and looks at it, then back at him. "Another for last time."

"Jesus Christ," he mutters. "Fine, here. And here's another one for next time."

She crumples them in her hand and then shoves them into her pocket when she pulls on her jeans.

"You really are a little whore," the boy says with a smirk, but she doesn't care. She spends it on candy that she hides in her backpack and doesn't bother to make it last because she knows that there will be more.

The guard at Juvenile Hall strip searches her and makes fun of her sharp knees and tiny breasts, so she grabs the woman's taser and hits the button. Then she pulls her orange jumpsuit back on, steps over the guard's motionless body, and leaves, ignoring the eyes that follow her.

Foster dad number one comes into her room one night and reaches up her nightgown, but she bites his arm and says "No! Only my real family can do that!"

His eyes widen and he leaves and doesn't come to her again.

No one wants to foster a girl with conduct disorder and a past at Juvi, so she's put in a home. They don't call it an orphanage, but no one is stupid enough to not know that that is exactly what it is. She gets tired of the mattress like concrete and the noise in the morning, so she leaves. A lot of kids do, but they always get caught. Someone sees them packing, or they get caught sneaking out.

Missy isn't most kids, and she doesn't sneak away. She goes to school and then she doesn't come back. She makes her way to a bus station, finds a girl with a similar build to her, and steals her duffel bag when she's not looking. Then he tosses her cards and cell phone and anything else that can possibly be tracked, and uses the cash to buy a ticket for the next bus going anywhere that isn't there. She gets off in Cleveland and puts on the other girl's summer clothes and starts hitchhiking.

She and another girl at juvi finger each other in a bathroom stall and she washes the cum off her hands, realizing that she just had her first pleasant sexual experience, her first real orgasm. They do it again and again, trying to make each other scream louder than the other without getting caught, and Missy pays attention until she learns enough to win.

A fake ID gets her into a seedy little bar in Chicago which gets her into the apartment of a drunk IT guy who gets into her pants and then falls into a sleep so deep he could be comatose for all she knows, but she could not care less. She steals his wallet and car keys and by the time he wakes up she's two states away with new plates, waiting for the new paint job to dry.

She told him she was from Maine, so that's where the cops look, while she's in California in short shorts and movie star sunglasses, an enigma with her pale hair and skin and eyes, but not enough of one to get herself caught.

"Why don't you kill?" Number six asks. Missy yawns.

"I don't know."

"Do you want to?"

"Yes."

"Then why don't you?"

"I said I don't know," she snaps. Then she looks back up at the ceiling. "I wouldn't like it so much if someone killed me."

"So you don't want to make enemies?"

"No. I just...don't wanna be the kind of person that kills people." She doesn't say it, but they both know what she's thinking: _I don't want to be like my family. _

Therapist number six pushes for a mental hospital as an alternate to juvi hall. Missy's not sure how she feels about that. It doesn't matter because it doesn't work.

Someone's mom at school number two finds out Missy's Deep Dark Secret and the kids take it and run with it.

"Where's your daddy, Melissa?"

"In jail." She doesn't look up from her textbook. "It's Missy."

"Is he gonna die?"

"Probably."

"Are you gonna try to kill us?"

She looks up. "Yes," she says flatly, and no matter how many times she says she didn't mean it, no one seems to listen. The parents make a petition and she is formally asked to leave the school before the first semester is over.

Foster dad number eight beats a little girl around, and Missy remembers the first little girl and the taste of her blood, and she knows this could end the same way, with a boy and the taste of copper and the words "What the fuck is wrong with you?" So she finds some matches and sets the backyard shed on fire, and laughs while it burns, even when he turns his fists on her.

A sixteen year old girl stands by the road, counting the things she has to her name. A duffel bag full of clothes that aren't hers, a fake ID, an official diagnosis of conduct disorder (the nice way of saying teenage sociopath) and the knowledge that her sanity is clinging by a thread. A trucker pulls over and she gets in.

"Hey there, Missy." Her heart stops for a second, but then he asks her name, and she breathes.

"Lilah," she says. "Lilah Capone."

"Pretty name for a pretty lady," he says. He lets her choose the radio station and then he sets his hand on her legs, running it up and down, more and more inward. He's steering with one hand, but the road is empty aside from him. Still, she has no intentions of dying in a car accident. If she dies, she's going to die surrounded by flames and the sound of her own laughter and goddammit, the world is going to remember her. So she turns toward him and smiles. "Why don't you pull over?"

He laughs a little. "You're not gonna fight back?"

"Why would I?"

He shakes his head and pulls over. "What the fuck is wrong with you?" He asks it playfully, and she smiles, looking up at him from under her eyelashes, but she answers the question inside her head anyway.

_Good fucking question. _


End file.
